$5,000 Problem

This, of course, will be touched in the comic:

My brother decided that he wanted to get a better fuel efficient car than his old truck. We agreed to help him with this endeavor. Having purchased three cars since getting married (two of them used) we have a lot more knowledge than my brother on the subject.

While I was at work and my husband was working with my father to get the title to the truck, my brother sneaked off with a bill of sale and traded his truck for a car...which promptly broke down within five miles of the previous owner's house.


Since the events were not under the control of my husband or myself, we were unable to get the previous owner to trade back.

Truck's value: ~$7,000 (parents bought for $12,000)
Car's value: ~$7,000 asking price, <$4,000 Kelly Blue Book Value

So, from the offset, my brother lost $3,000 from the get go on that since he traded vehicle for vehicle.

The car he got not only broke, but was spewing out black smoke and the tires were worn down to the treads. Despite this, a mechanic buddy of brother offered to buy off the car quickly. The offered price was $2,500.

So, for a $7,000 truck, my brother is getting $2,500. A loss of $4,500. Someone is going to be taking to bus to school.

From Life to Comic

When I was originally planning on drawing And Brother Makes Three by myself, I was going to use my own drawing style. I don't draw too much, but I tend to specialize in anthropomorphic characters. Since it was going to include a more fantastical look to it, I was going to rename the characters as well. My character would have gone by the old fallback, Niccea. Ryan would be Ice. And my brother would be called Octane or Auto (because he is a car enthusiast).

When my husband came on to the project, he wanted to base the comic characters closer in reality. I hope that this won't cause too much confusion as Danny and Michelle from Ice Pick have their designs based on us. I will try to change up my husband's look a little bit when we get to the comic to make him distinct from Danny. My counterpart in the comic won't look too much like Michelle as I have an entirely different style from her.

Of course, with the new character designs, the names would have to be more reality grounded as well. It lead to quite the argument with my husband as it was hard to think of a name for my character that wasn't my usual fall back. We ended up choosing Elaine for my character's name and Billy for my husband's character. My brother we were going to call Mikey (but keep Auto as a nickname). Later, I made the argument to not change our names as it is a slice-of-life comic. I will use the Niccea, Ice, and Auto names in my scripting as my sort of Blue Harvest.

Starting A New Project

While things are slow with Ice Pick, Ryan and I are going to be working on And Brother Makes Three. As I stated previously, my brother has given us plenty of material both real and exaggerated. Right now, I estimate that we have seven and a half months worth of material.

The hardest part of the new project was division of labor. With Ice Pick we have my husband write the story and provide mock ups for each page. RPGgrenade drew out the pages in the final style with pencils. Then, I would take the sketches and turn them into the final product of the pages. This is what lead to the breakdown with the comic. (We haven't gotten new sketches in a while.)

I was originally intending to do the pages for this new comic from front to back on my own. However, Ryan wanted to participate in the project as well. Since this comic will be in strip style, it doesn't require the level of detail that Ice Pick does, so we can do the work just ourselves. The running plan for this comic is form my husband and I to keep a working list of scenarios that we want to include in the comic. My husband will draw the comic using both the list and some improv pages that he comes with. (He claims that he draws better and is funnier than me). Then, I will have my usually role of putting the finished pages together.

And Brother Makes Three

My brother has moved in with us and had provided enough material for a new webcomic. Details coming soon.